I like the 1st day of a New Year as collectively everyone (at least in the Western world–Asian New Year takes another month to kick in) is on the same page about starting fresh.  It’s like a giant reminder of what life is: these moments of things flipping over, people dying, job transitions, new births, friendships that begin anew or fade away.  The start of a New Year allows us to quantify ourselves in this vast journey that guarantees nothing except change. 

A New Year is a giant leap in the dark.  It’s standing before this full 12 month cycle and throwing a hopeful belief into the abyss of an unknown. In this regard starting a New Year can be like starting a new, brave adventure. This is why it can be electrifying.

As you get older it’s easier to be taken down by the wolves of life.  You get more complacent.  You get more ridged & stuck in what is familiar.  You lose the verve and moxie of youth.  In some cases, you have more to lose: children who depend on you, a mortgage, a career, a reputation to uphold. Risk becomes less. The failures & heartbreaks of life make you more uncertain.  This erodes your faith in yourself & the greater world at hand you are mingling with.  I’ve always said the journey of adulthood is one big dismantling of paradigms.  In your youth the naive paradigms are what propel you.

Last year for New Years I took a road trip with my dog. We went from Austin TX to Santa Fe, NM.  This was my 1st time taking a trip solo by myself to a place I had never been where I was meeting no one and where I knew no one.  I was nervous.  My Toyota Tacoma had over 130,000 miles.  There had been a giant, historic snowstorm that had shut down I 40.  I wasn’t sure if the roads would be clear to make the 12-14 hour drive.  We set out anyway.

There was a silence & peace on those roads like no other.  Oil pumps pumping oil from the fields dotting the highway were my only companions for much of the stretch.  When we got to Roswell, NM I let my dog out to pee & the snow banks were piled up higher than my truck.  A day earlier & we likely couldn’t make it through town.  I rolled into Santa Fe by 10PM. My Airbnb host had soup from Whole Foods for me waiting on the stove & a bottle of red wine. 

I spent New Year’s Eve Day hanging out at 10,000 Waves spa.  I sat in the steaming hot, outdoor hot tubs naked and meditating.  Water & cleansing was a theme of this trip. Every once in awhile I went over to the railing where snow was piled up & dumped it on my shoulders & breasts. I sat in the silent glass filled hut filled with pillows & journaled for several hours. 

I spent New Years Eve night in an old, established & well loved sushi bar that had been in Santa Fe since the late 1970s.  It was packed. I sat at the sushi bar. It was all couples, none under the age of 60 years.  I struck up conversations with many of them.  Having grown up an only child spending lots of time with people way older than me this comes very naturally for me. I feel most at home in the company of much older adults, taking in their wisdom.  The older I get the more this gap closes. By the time midnight rolled around I was at Meow Wolf’s New Year Eve bash taking place where Santa Fe holds their farmers market.  Meow Wolf’s actual headquarters in an old bowling alley wouldn’t be open for a few more months. This was their kick off bash.  Creative types are my favorite types of people. 

The rest of the trip was spent exploring more spas.  One of the days I drove up in the mountains to Giggling Hot springs.  This took me through Los Alamos Park, run by the US government.  They told me to drive straight through, no pictures (Los Alamos is where the atom bomb was made & it is still a top secret place). I was terrified as a snow storm started raging.  I’m from Texas & don’t know how to drive in snow. My Tacoma does not have 4 wheel drive. Nobody else was on the snowy roads. I couldn’t see, the roads were very slippery & winding with large drop offs as I was climbing in elevation. My cell service was spotty.  Snow was blowing everywhere. It took me twice as long to get to the hot springs. I drove the whole time white knuckled & praying I wouldn’t die.  

When I got to the hot springs I had Giggling Hot Springs all to myself. You rent out your time in 2 hour blocks & no one was there during the time I arrived. A large party of 8 had just left when I got there. Had I not been caught in the snow storm driving through Los Alamos it would have been crowded.  This was a great stroke of luck.  I had brought Joseph Campbell’s book on Goddesses with me. I’ve had this book checked out from the library for 2 years. I just keep renewing it, and going back & re-reading passages.  It’s a dense book, and very powerful. After taking a dip I spent time under the gazebo reading & looking out over the mountains.  Giggling Hot Springs is a magical place. It’s rustic to say the least but I like that about it.  The water bubbles up out of the middle of the pool at a very high temperature.  I liked to stand over the bubbling water, catching it with my hands, pretending as though my hands could be used to command the water to rise up from the Earth.  The concept of feminine power as written in Campbell’s book is one of life force: the thread that runs through all things.  

My favorite part of the trip (besides meeting George R.R. Martin who lived in the neighborhood of my Airbnb. That was crazy) was when I visited the Taos Brewery on the outskirts of Taos, NM.  I liked it so much I stayed longer than I had intended.  This caused me to run late in getting to the last spa I had planned to visit. The other spa was a good 90 minute drive away.  I had wanted to be in the spa, undressed & taking a mud bath right as the sun set since the mud bath closed at dark.  This probably wasn’t going to happen. I put the pedal to the metal, and once again took off down desolate back roads with no cars in sight.  I drove over the famous bridge used in films like Natural Born Killers.  I drove past abandoned post offices.  I had no cell service, so I had downloaded Ra Ra Riot’s new single called “Water” & played it on repeat. I had the heater on (it was below freezing outside) but rolled my windows down anyway & let the frigid air blow through my truck.  I turned the volume up on “Water”. The sun kept slipping away.  It felt like I was chasing the sunset. It was a race. I got to the spa, but the sun had won. Darkness had set in.  But I had made it.

The New Year solo adventure would kick off a new thing for me & that is solo travel.  By July I would take it international & be boarding an airplane for Peru, a country I had never been to nor had anyone there that I knew.  I went to a Priestess in Peru retreat high up in the Andes mountains (yep, I got very altitude sick). I ate delicious food in Lima, the capital, one of the best food cities in the world.  I took a plane to Cusco, then a cab, then a several hour train, eventually climbing to the top of Macchu Pichu.  Were there some scary, uncertain times on that Peru trip? You betcha.  But did I work in every second to flex this new self trust muscle I was developing? Yes. And magical things come from this.  There is a saying, it says be bold & great forces will come to your aid.  This is what I wanted to work with.  I want to use this force & start to apply it to other areas of life. This was just the beginning for me. 

This theme of water was very powerful for me on that beginning of 2016, New Years trip. Water is cleansing. Water is a conduit. It can carry electricity. Water is life. We are born in a womb of water. Our bodies are 80% water. The Chinese revere water for its power yet subtlety. It represents flow & going with the flow. Wu Wei energy. Allowing things to pass through. Allowing things to be. Water, and especially floods, represent starting over, a new beginning. Just like a New Year.